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Yes, but surprising to whom? If you are going to talk about it, then it's no more surprising to you. How do you know if it is going to be surprising to your audience? When everyone has access to Youtube, TED talks, Social Media and blogs, it is hard to gauge what is surprising and what is not anymore.

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Write for an audience, read the other work that audience reads, that will help you get a sense of whether something is going to be surprising to them.

Here is a longer lecture on a similar idea from U Chicago Writing Program https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM&t=3s

Indeed! Plus, whether something is surprising depends on what was expected in the first place. So you have to create some shared expectations first, right? Some kind of buildup?

Seems like a spectrum, if you stay too close to the familiar, you will be boring. But if you deviate too far away from the familiar, you will be confusing. A nice surprise lives in a sweet spot somewhere in the middle. Like the very narrow band of our planet's orbital radius where we are close enough to the sun to keep water liquid but not so close that proteins would disintegrate.

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